Suicide rates among US soldiers are heading for a record high, army data released on Thursday shows.Ya think? How about being forced into a war that has an ever-changing reason for being there, no end in sight, no draft to alleviate the repeated deployments, and no way to win over the mistreated and furious inhabitants?
Eighty-nine suicides were confirmed in 2007, and if 32 suspected suicides are also confirmed, the total will rise above the 2006 figure of 102. The 2006 suicide rate was the highest since US army records began in 1980.
"I think it's a marker of the stress on the force," said army psychiatric consultant Colonel Elsbeth Ritchie. "Families are tired".
The data, released at a news conference, also showed that more than 2,000 soldiers had tried to take their own lives or injure themselves in 2007, compared with fewer than 1,500 the previous year.How casually the Bush administration throws away lives. How indicative of the rot at the center that they then try to cut veteran's benefits and deny PTSD. How many more brave soldiers are we going to lose before the military says enough?
About 34 of the total 2007 deaths were soldiers who died while serving a tour of duty in Iraq, an increase from 27 in Iraq the previous year, the preliminary figures showed.
Army suicide rates have risen in recent years, coinciding with the US-led military action in Iraq and Afghanistan.
With military resources stretched, last year the Pentagon extended tours of duty from 12 months to 15. It has also sent some troops back to the wars several times.
Update: How many Iraqis have to die in this Bush Quagmire?
LONDON (Reuters) - More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to research conducted by one of Britain's leading polling groups.
The survey, conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB) with 2,414 adults in face-to-face interviews, found that 20 percent of people had had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, rather than natural causes.
The last complete census in Iraq conducted in 1997 found 4.05 million households in the country, a figure ORB used to calculate that approximately 1.03 million people had died as a result of the war, the researchers found.
The margin of error in the survey, conducted in August and September 2007, was 1.7 percent, giving a range of deaths of 946,258 to 1.12 million.
2 comments:
Support of the troops has always been a joke, sadly.
And this administration has made it even more of a joke. They connected supporting the troops to supporting the war which is utterly moronic.
Since when did 'supporting the troops' mean throwing them into an unnecessary war with poor equipment, no clear mission; keeping them there until they are carbombed and then cutting their veteran's benefits?
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